Translate

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Awakening cannot be explained, but experienced.  Trying to explain it is like trying to understand liquid water by studying ice.  It is close, but the opposite end of a far larger experience.  Explaining what nonduality is by talking about the ocean of being or just the individual is in a sense missing the point because in the experiencing ALL states exist at once with no paradox, no contradiction.  An Awakening breaks you out of the old accustomed modes of being and moves you into a watery realm of self that has always been there waiting for you, a fundamental aspect of your creaturehood, your being.  Like love, it can be described, but all descriptions fall short for the simple fact that its in its direct experience that it is known.  In that one moment, though, your world shifts in a significant way.  Even those who are touched by it in a temporary way are changed forever.  It is not something foreign to us, but fundamental.  When you find it, it is like awakening a long lost love, or something you always knew but had perhaps for the time being forgotten.  It is the mover of worlds.  It is a game changer, a churning of your insides until your earthly self aligns with the cosmic, and in that moment, you will know that the two were never separate.  Something inside of you served to create a rift that moved you in directions far afield from your fundamental self, your larger self.  While ego was involved, this has not been some cosmic accident, but an experiment, a journey we have chosen to take here in this world.  There is far more design in the stars than we could ever dream possible.

Unlike some, I do not feel that our more icy side is a false self.  All aspects of being serve a purpose, and we chose the arrangement of self for a purpose, which has been to learn the myriad ways that consciousness can arrange itself and express itself.  This purpose has served the infinite self in its quest for experiencing a boundless realm of awareness.  All of this, every scrap of it, is a creation, and suggesting that the creation is any less real than the consciousness that formed it forgets the nature of the infinite which is itself creative energy.  In fact, you can work your way through an Awakening by learning to allow this creative energy to flow through you.  This energy is freeing, opening, and liberating.  It actually breaks away the ice of your former being so that you may begin to experience the more watery realms of your awareness.  It isn't that the ice isn't of any benefit, its that it has its place within being, but so does the infinite ocean, and when the ice clogs the self so that the watery self cannot flow, we become limited in what we can ourselves experience in the moment.  We feel cut off from some still larger source of purpose, which is the foundation of our creaturehood; the creative.  The egoic self, the individual is a part of being, its just not the whole story.  There are vast realms of awareness quite different from the ones you know now, and it is in this broader awareness or state of being that will show you in a direct way what awaits you.  The beauty that you are, the beauty that is the universe, lies nested ---curled--- waiting to unfurl, bringing great fruit to bear in your life.

Since creation is itself an act of love, creativity is itself unifying and a bringer of love. This is why those who are creative, regardless of their discipline, will love what they do.  Its because the work, be it a physicist, mechanic, librarian, teacher, lawyer, or artist, bears the mark of the creative.  Otherwise, the work become work, instead of ones passion, and everything becomes ordinary, perhaps even perfunctory.  Observe anyone who is great at what they do and you will find creative energy, innovative thinking, a willingness to break out of old modes and molds. In truth, our creativity is our connection to our divinity.  Ringing within us are the faint echoes of the first impulse of creation, the very essence and secret of how worlds were formed out of a seeming "nothing" that was itself full of everything. This is why the experience of Awakening is full of passion and power, of beauty, and grace.  Its is beautiful and terrifying as the old you, so crammed with ice, finds itself on unsteady ground while the volcanic passion of this experience seethes up all around you, threatening to swallow you whole, threatening to destroy everything your egoic self has worked hard to install, protect, and propagate.  It only seems a threat at first because of how conditioned you have become to feeling like your individual self was all there was.  The ego is threatened and swings into action, creating body pain, trying to keep together the old alignment based more on a limited understanding than on anything enduringly infinite or larger than itself. Because it is a young self, it cannot be expected to move with the same depth as the soul, the infinite self.  It tries, and slowly slowly, it learns, but knowing already exists within you and it lies deep within your breast, deep within the yearning that is but the tail of a much larger tiger.  Hot blooded and alive, it moves with the certainty that its divine being has conferred.  The only threat that it brings is the threat of change.  Uncertain, there may be fear at first until you are utterly seduced and brought into a new way of being, and of feeling.  Out of the intellect and into feeling, you learn that the one language in the universe is Feeling.  It is through this that we commune with the entirety of All That Is.  Here, secrets unlock and we resolve into beings who are unmoved by those secrets.  It isn't that a secret isn't juicy and wonderful sometimes, its that using the secret it simply no longer necessary, for the secret is that it is Us.  Whatever it is, we are One with it, for this Watery realm of our being means to heal the separation that our individuality has served to create through its having been created. 

Beyond who you are, and what you think is possible, is something still more. In our conventional thinking there exists all manner of distortions and presumptions that do not serve our larger unfolding.  Knowledge is not the key to unlocking the universe.  It is love and the creative, and all of this is spoken in the language of the Creator which is FEELING.  This is the bright sun that shall melt away your ice and bring you to a new alignment to your being.   The secret to all of this is learning to feel deeply.  And in those depths of water fire and even ice, we discover through wonder what it is to be a human reaching for the stars.

No comments: